The L.A. Times music blog

Live review: Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp*

August 13, 2009 | 3:14
pm

Reporting from Lake Elsinore, Calif. — The great thing about minor league
baseball is the intimate view it gives those who relish the game itself more
than the race to the World Series or the high-priced superstars.

Bob
Dylan offers much the same intimacy for music fans with another summer tour of
minor league ballparks, accompanied this time by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp
and the Wiyos.

Their only Southern California stop was Wednesday night
at Diamond Park, the home of the Lake Elsinore Storm, the San Diego Padres'
Class-A farm team. It was a refreshingly pure, no-frills look at three veterans
who are still in top form, plus one terrific rookie act.

Dylan's
95-minute headlining performance introduced a couple of the songs from his
recent "Together Through Life" album into a set much like what he's been
delivering with aplomb over the last decade, thanks to a sharp band behind
him.

He even picked up a guitar, something he's rarely done of late. He
usually stations himself at the keyboard because, according to a recent Rolling
Stone interview, he can't find anyone to play keyboards exactly the way he wants
them played.

After casually strolling on stage outfitted in a black suit
with yellow piping, a matching yellow shirt, bolo tie and modified white gaucho
hat, he got things started with "Ballad of a Thin Man." The rock bard then
strapped on an electric guitar for another '60s classic, "The Times They Are
A-Changin';" it was the only time he played the instrument all night.

Between sharply delivered lyric phrases, he ripped off a solo on a night
markedly low on such instrumental excursions. For the most part, Dylan's
harmonica was the most frequently spotlighted instrument until guitarist Lucas
Nelson -- Willie's son and a recent addition to his dad's Family band -- came
out at the end for "Like a Rolling Stone," the new "Jolene" and "All Along the
Watchtower."

Fans often grumble that Dylan, 68, frequently interprets his
signature songs so radically that they are unrecognizable. So it was a bit
surprising that the first two numbers held as close to the original arrangements
as they did.

The reward for those who prize spontaneous musical creation
over rote repetition is the new perspectives Dylan provided with shifted vocal
or instrumental emphasis on "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)," a
gloriously hard-swinging rendition of "Highway 61 Revisited" and the amped-up
reggae groove given to "Love Sick" from 1997's "Time Out of Mind."

From
the new album he included "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'," a characteristically
layered number that starts off like a love song -- "I love you pretty
baby/You're the only one I've ever known" -- then turns existential with a
mysterious tagline at the end of each verse.

His words were surrounded
by a hypnotically rolling New Orleans rhythm--not the kind of thing likely to
find its way to the top of the charts today, but manna from heaven for those who
know the riches of American regional music.

Willie Nelson's hourlong set
is a bit like the Grand Canyon: Its basic features have been in place for what
seems like eons, but the details get shaped and refined subtly as time rolls
on.

Nelson opened with "Whiskey River," gave a nod to his departed pal
Waylon Jennings with "Good Hearted Woman," dispatched his own '60s standards in
a time-tested medley of "Funny How Time Slips Away," "Crazy" and "When the
Evening Sun Goes Down" and saluted Hank Williams with "Jambalaya," "Hey Good
Lookin'" and "I Saw the Light."

He freshened things up with
recent-vintage material such as "Superman," his duet hit with Toby Keith "Beer
for My Horses" and "You Don't Think I'm Funny Any More." He's got a new album of
pop standards, "American Classic," coming out later this month, but the only
song from it that he offered was one that's he's been doing for decades: "You
Were Always on My Mind." It mattered little -- Nelson's jazz-inflected,
to-hell-with-the-beat vocals and guitar solos are a wonder.

Mellencamp
is neither the master singer that Nelson is nor the poet Dylan is, but his
middle America songs demonstrate empathy for the heart of the working man and
woman.

He and his sharp six-piece band came as close to rock mainstream
as anything on the bill, touching on the cornerstones of his blue-collar
repertoire that stretches back to the '70s: "Pink Houses," "Authority
Song," "Rain on the Scarecrow," with newer entries including "Don't Need This
Body" (for which he was joined by the song's producer, T Bone Burnett) and "If I
Die Sudden" from his recent "Life, Death, Love and Freedom" album.

A
too-brief opening set from the Brooklyn-based quartet the Wiyos was pure joy in
its modern-day vision of vintage string-band jazz, folk and blues as played on
banjo, upright bass, chromatic harmonica, dobro, steel guitar, washboard and
even a pocket bugle.

These guys aren't likely to make it to pop's big
leagues. But the game would be so much less fun without such fabulously skilled
and inspired kooks.

--Randy Lewis

Photo credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

UPDATE: The original version of this story mistakenly identified Mellencamp's song "Pink Houses" as "Ain't That America." Also, a song in Nelson’s set, "Night Life," was mistakenly called “When the Evening Sun Goes Down.”